Electricity rushed through me when he said I was sexy. I had to fight down that pesky feeling in order to be annoyed with him. “That would be a great idea,” I acknowledged, “if we were a band.”
He gave me that dangerous look I didn’t see very often. My heart raced. For a second I thought we were going to have it out, once and for all, right there in the back of the SUV.
But the look vanished as fast as it had come. “Aw, honey,” he said, “let’s not fight.” He reached around my shoulders and drew me to him, too hard, a joking hug that I put up with because it meant our argument was over for now. He relaxed his hold, but he kept his arm around me.
Though Ace was talking to Charlotte, I saw a flash of his eyes in the rearview mirror, and I knew he was watching us. Then he rolled down his window, letting in the warm summer breeze and the smell of cut grass.
During the drive, I was surprised that Charlotte didn’t engineer some excuse to trade seats with me so she could sit with Sam—Oh, I must sit near the back so I can put one hand on my tom to keep it from falling—but she seemed content to keep her place in the front. She was absorbed in conversation with Ace about a TV show they both watched. Sam interjected a joke now and then, but I was utterly lost. I’d spent most of my nights practicing fiddle.
Along the drive from Nashville to Chattanooga, exits and billboards petered out until nothing was left but trees streaming by our windows. The interstate was a wide expanse of asphalt cut through the forest, tilting to one side and climbing mountains. When I blinked, I opened my eyes again and felt dizzy, disoriented because of the strange angle of the ground, and the SUV climbing the road like nothing was wrong.
As I looked around at the scenery that seemed normal and yet not, I glanced at my reflection in the window. The wind blew my short black curls around my head, the longer pieces in front teasing the tip of my chin. The sun lit my face. But what surprised me was that I was scowling at the landscape. That’s not how I felt. With effort, I lifted the corners of my mouth into a smile for my own reflection. Then I glanced at Sam so close beside me.
When he felt me looking at him, he smiled. He squeezed my shoulders, more gently this time, then let me go, because two hours would be a long drive with his heavy arm around me. But he rested his hand on my bare thigh.
I would remember this bright afternoon forever.
Arriving at the most luxurious house I’d ever seen, we pulled up to the back lawn, at the end of a pristine pool, and the boys got out to unpack Charlotte’s kit. I couldn’t help feeling curious about the gig. I imagined the record company execs who’d thrown parties for Julie had even more astonishing homes, but I hadn’t been invited.
Between trips back and forth from the pool to the van, while Sam wasn’t around, of course, Charlotte kindly explained that one of Sam’s exes had arranged for us to play this gig, her aunt’s surprise fiftieth birthday party. She went on to inform me that the band’s Lao wedding circuit was also a result of an ex with an in. She stated these facts as joylessly as she could manage, but I knew her ulterior motive. If she’d decided to back off me after I claimed Velma and let her be Daphne, she’d forgotten all about that when Sam put his arm around me.
It was hard to be angry with her after the party guests started showing up, bused in by a hired service so the birthday lady wouldn’t see their cars and suspect what was up. When she came in the front door and two hundred of her closest friends leaped up from behind her living room furniture, she screamed. Then she cackled with joy and dashed upstairs to change into her bathing suit. I hoped I could enjoy life that much when I was that old. Or . . . ever.
I’d never pictured myself playing a gig so crazy, much less playing it in a bikini top and a denim skirt. The party was a riot, full of great food and fun strangers, even if most of them were middle-aged and probably shouldn’t have been wearing bathing suits that small. Between sets, the band went in the pool, too. Mostly Sam and Ace and Charlotte and I talked together about music and Nashville and the CMA Festival starting Thursday—I carefully avoided any mention of Julie—but Sam and I kept finding excuses to flirt and rib each other. Several times when I teased him, he found it necessary to grab me, his hands strong around my wrists in the cool water.
The only negative of the night came when Charlotte quipped that I shouldn’t get my hair wet because the ink might run. Ace splashed her, and Sam dismissed the comment by putting his arm around me and changing the subject. However, at midnight when the party finally closed down and we packed the SUV with Charlotte’s drum kit, I was still thinking about my hair and other people’s perception of it, dyed an unnatural black.
After I’d deposited the last cymbal in the back, Sam opened the front passenger door for me. I was afraid he intended to take the back with Charlotte, just to keep her happy and spread the love around, while I sat up front with Ace. I asked Sam carefully, “Oh, are you driving back?”
“I always drive back at night.”
As I climbed into the passenger seat, I held my breath to keep from sighing with relief so loudly that everyone could hear. I had another two hours in proximity to Sam—though I would probably sleep through most of it. Three late nights were catching up with me.
“I’ll never know whether I inherited the alcoholic gene from my dad,” Sam was saying as he slid behind the steering wheel and slammed his door, “but I definitely inherited the barfly gene. I can’t sleep at night, and I can’t get up in the morning.”
I could see that. Sam was creative and dedicated, but his wasn’t the plodding bright-and-early work ethic of the morning person, like mine. It was the crazy creative burst of the night owl, long dark hours of despair before dawn.
“Here.” He hadn’t pulled his T-shirt back on after our last dip in the pool and our last set of songs. Now he wadded it up, crammed it into the console between our seats, and gently pressed my shoulders until I laid my head down. I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and tried to relax. Sam was at the wheel, and I trusted him. As he started the SUV and cruised past the mansion’s marble columns, I wondered if Julie would buy a house like this in the next few years, and whether she would throw parties like a record company exec, or if she would never get a chance because she would always be gone.
I struggled back from sleep, then started upright, sure something terrible had happened to wake me. The SUV droned along the interstate. The wind whooshed through the open window, and the forest spun by at the edges of the headlight beams.